Jane Withers made several movies before teaming up with Shirley Temple in 1934 for Bright Eyes. It wasn't exactly an equal partnering. Temple was the star and Withers was the mean girl who caused all kinds of trouble. But it was that mean girl performance that got her noticed. And that recognition brought her a contract with 20th Century Fox to become the star of her own set of movies. Jane Withers was more than up to the task and also substantially less cutesy than Temple. In many ways, Withers' movies stand up better today as she comes off less overly rehearsed and theatrical than many child actors of the day.

One of the best movies Withers did was Paddy O'Day, made in 1935 and directed by Lewis Seiler, a true studio man, directing whatever he was given with efficiency and speed. The movie follows the same route as many depression era films, filling its time with equal quantities pathos and optimism. Paddy, played by Withers, is a nine year old girl on her way to America from Ireland. While on the boat, she meets up with a Russian woman, Tamara, played by Rita Cansino, the actress who would later change her last name to Hayworth. Tamara is coming to America to meet up with her cousin and work in his café. Paddy's coming to America to reunite with her mom who went ahead to get a job and a place for them to live. Her mom works as a maid at a home owned by nebbish stuffed bird collector Roy Ford (Pinky Tomlin) who lives there with his two, old cranky aunts.

When Paddy O'Day arrives at Ellis Island, the authorities take her aside and won't let her leave. It turns out her mother has died and Paddy will have to be sent back to Ireland. They tell her that her mother is very sick and put her in a room with other orphans but Paddy escapes and makes her way to the home where her mother works. Before she can get there, immigration authorities inform the Fords that Paddy must be turned in if she shows up.

Paddy does indeed show up but, lucky for her, she arrives just after the two aunts leave on holiday. The butler Benton (Russell Simpson) and maid Dora (Jane Darwell) take Paddy in and hide her, which works out well until the two aunts return and she is discovered. By this point, Roy has discovered her too and taken a liking to her. He's also taken a liking to Tamara, who shows up looking for Paddy, worried that she is not being cared for.

Paddy O'Day is the kind of silly child star vehicle in which tragedy is met head on with a plucky song and everyone who comes to America finds instant success and acceptance. The only people intent on sending Paddy back are the two old aunts, painted so broadly they might as well be wearing black hats and twirling glued on mustaches. But the thing about Paddy O'Day is that despite the broad strokes and generous use of cliché, it works. It works because Jane Withers is a real talent surrounding by some even more amazing talents.

Rita Cansino would later become a star in her own right as Rita Hayworth and here it's easy to see why. She has a real charm and charisma (and beauty) that leaps off the screen and steals the attention of the viewer in every scene she inhabits. Jane Darwell, as the maid, shows why she would go on to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) five years later. Here she once again proves her talent for drama by delivering the best acted moment in the movie, when she sits Paddy on her lap and explains that her mother was sick but now, sadly, she's gone. It's a scene that could have been played for overdone pathos but Seiler wisely pulls the camera back and plays the whole thing in medium shot, giving the actors the distance needed to play the scene intimately while the audience can watch and sympathize without feeling intrusive. For a low-budget child star vehicle, it's quite a well done scene.

The most surprising addition to the cast is Pinky Tomlin. Tomlin, a musician by trade, plays Roy Ford as a nerdy sort who awakens to the vitality of life after falling for Tamara. Tomlin played banjo with Louis Armstrong's band when he was only sixteen and his song "In Ole Oklahoma" eventually became Oklahoma's state song.

Paddy O'Day might not have made the box office numbers that the vehicles of Shirley Temple did, but it's better than most child star vehicles of the day and Withers was a formidable talent. Later in life, she played small parts in big movies, like Giant (1956), and became Josephine the Plumber in a series of commercials for Comet but it's her roles in the thirties for which she will always be remembered. And of all those roles, Paddy O'Day may well be the most memorable of all.

Producer: Sol M. Wurtzel
Director: Lewis Seiler
Writer: Lou Breslow, Edward Eliscu, Sonya Levien (story)
Original Music: Samuel Kaylin
Cinematography: Arthur C. Miller
Film Editor: Alfred DeGaetano
Art Direction: Duncan Cramer, Lewis H. Creber
Cast: Jane Withers (Paddy O'Day), Pinky Tomlin (Roy Ford), Rita Cansino, aka, Rita Hayworth (Tamara Petrovitch), Jane Darwell (Dora), George Givot (Mischa Petrovitch), Francis Ford (Immigration Officer Tom McGuire), Vera Lewis (Aunt Flora), Louise Carter (Aunt Jane), Russell Simpson (Benton).
BW-75.

by Greg Ferrara